low volume on km c6000, xerox 550

[MarkRM]

We a small in-plant, printing approximately 5,000 color clicks a month, all automatically duplexed, on high quality coated stock (generally Mohawk Color Copy, 32# text). Looking at both the km c6000 and xerox 550.

On paper, both printers would seem to fit the bill, but I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with either they'd like to share. In particular, I've seen many references in this forum to the effect that buying a production class printer for a low volume operation such as ours could actually be bad for the printer. Is that right? Why?

We are replacing a C1+, which has great image quality, but is slow and unreliable, even at our low volumes. Are the Xerox and KM good choices?

Thanks in advance.

 

[andy1]

Hi Mark,

Resurrecting an old thread here but I've just compared the KM c5501 and c6000 on the print quality front. The c6000 does produce a higher dpi (1200x1200x8) vs the c5501 (600x600x8) but considering you'll only be printing 5k clicks a month maybe the c5501 is better suited to your needs?

Another choice may be the OKI es9410, I purchased one as a stopgap before moving onto production, and I have to admit it’s impressive for an office box. It does have its bad points but it’s an awful lot cheaper than the big 4 and produces great output depending on your requirements. Fixed click costs, banner printing and 300gsm media handling. If you can commit to 3k clicks per month you can expect between 8-9p per colour SRA3 click, when you weigh up how much cheaper this machine is to buy (£4-6k) vs the others, and your total print volume it may work out cheaper in the long run.

I've known two trade clients who have purchased high production machines and had to sell them because they didn't run enough copies, as after a few months of running under 10k prints the machines started to produce poor quality print. I know one had a Xerox but I'm not sure about the other. It's worth considering purchasing a cheaper machine unless the dpi is very important to you?

I've spent many months and a hell of a lot of time reviewing all the realistic options: KM, Ricoh, Xerox and Canon and my conclusion has been - at least for us - that KM is the better choice. The machine you buy depends on what you need from it, for us it’s registration, colour and reliability. That is to say speed, dpi, finishing options and RIP's are of little interest to us within reasonable limits.

I've only had chance to use the Xerox 252 machine in their range, but as a note on the quality I noticed a lot of colour shift across the page (from burgundy to purple) and the toner was a fixed gloss or high gloss. An advantage on KM kit (c5501 and c6000 at least) is you can go from completely matt flat toner up to mirror-effect gloss simply by changing settings for each job. You may be able to do this on other machines by cooling the fuser temp but that can cause toner to scrape off, the KM's default is matt with a very small temperature increase for gloss effect.

Let me know via PM or email if you would like to know what I've learned, as I'm not interested in starting a KM v X debate or slagging off one company over another in a forum.

Thanks,
Andrew